The Botanic Garden Volume Ii Part 17

Air-balloon of Mongolfier--Arts of weaving and spinning--Arkwright's cotton mills--Invention of letters, figures and crotchets--Mrs. Delany's paper-garden--Mechanism of a watch, and design for its case--Time, hours, moments--Transformation of Nebuchadnazer--St. Anthony preaching to fish Sorceress--Miss Crew's drawing--Song to May--Frost scene--Discovery of the bark--Moses striking the rock--Dropsy--Mr. Howard and prisons

CANTO III.

Witch and imps in a church--Inspired Priestess--Fusseli's night-mare--Cave of Thor and subterranean Naads--Medea and her children--Palmira weeping Group of wild creatures drinking--Poison tree of Java--Time and hours--Lady shot in battle--Wounded deer--Harlots--Laoc.o.o.n and his sons--Drunkards and diseases--Prometheus and the vulture--Lady burying her child in the plague Moses concealed on the Nile--Slavery of the Africans--Weeping Muse

CANTO IV.

Maid of night Fairies--Electric lady--Shadrec, Meshec, and Abednego, in the fiery furnace--Shepherdesses--Song to Echo--Kingdom of China--Lady and distaff--Cupid spinning--Lady walking in snow--Children at play--Venus and Loves--Matlock Bath--Angel bathing--Mermaid and Nereids--Lady in salt-- Lot's wife--Lady in regimentals--Dejanira in a lion's skin--Offspring from the marriage of the Rose and Nightingale--Parched deserts in Africa-- Turkish lady in an undress--Ice-scene in Lapland--Lock-lomond by moon light--Hero and Leander--Gnome-husband and Palace under ground--Lady inclosed in a fig--Sylph-husband--Marine cave--Proteus-lover--Lady on a Dolphin--Lady bridling a Pard--Lady saluted by a Swan--Hymeneal procession --Night

CONTENTS OF THE NOTES.

Seeds of Canna used for prayer-beads

Stems and leaves of Callitriche so matted together, as they float on the water, as to bear a person walking on them

The female in Collinsonia approaches first to one of the males, and then to the other

Females in Nigella and Epilobium bend towards the males for some days, and then leave them

The stigma or head of the female in Spartium (common broom) is produced amongst the higher set of males; but when the keal-leaf opens, the pistil suddenly twists round like a French-horn, and places the stigma amidst the lower set of males

The two lower males in Ballota become mature before the two higher; and, when their dust is shed, turn outwards from the female

The plants of the cla.s.s Two Powers with naked seeds are all aromatic

Of these Marum and Nepeta are delightful to cats

The filaments in Meadia, Borago, Cyclamen, Solanum, &c. shewn _by reasoning_ to be the most unchangeable parts of those flowers

Rudiments of two hinder wings are seen in the cla.s.s Diptera, or two-winged insects

Teats of male animals

Filaments without anthers in Curc.u.ma, Linum, &c. and styles without stigmas in many plants, shew the advance of the works of nature towards greater perfection

Double flowers, or vegetable monsters, how produced

The calyx and lower series of petals not changed in double flowers

Dispersion of the dust in nettles and other plants

Cedar and Cypress unperishable

Anthoxanthum gives the fragrant scent to hay

Viviparous plants: the Aphis is viviparous in summer, and oviparous in autumn

Irritability of the stamen of the plants of the cla.s.s Syngenesia, or Confederate males

Some of the males in Lychnis, and other flowers arrive sooner at their maturity

Males approach the female in Gloriosa, Fritillaria, and Kalmia

Contrivances to destroy insects in Silene, Dionaea muscipula, Arum muscivorum, Dypsacus, &c.

Some bell-flowers close at night; others hang the mouths downwards; others nod and turn from the wind; stamens bound down to the pistil in Amaryllis formofissima; pistil is crooked in Hemerocallis flava, yellow day-lily Thorns and p.r.i.c.kles designed for the defence of the plant; tall Hollies have no p.r.i.c.kles above the reach of cattle

Bird-lime from the bark of Hollies like elastic gum

Adansonia the largest tree known, its dimensions

Bulbous roots contain the embryon flower, seen by dissecting a tulip-root

Flowers of Colchic.u.m and Hamamelis appear in autumn, and ripen their seed in the spring following

Sunflower turns to the sun by nutation, not by gyration

Dispersion of seeds

Drosera catches flies

Of the nectary, its structure to preserve the honey from insects

Curious proboscis of the Sphinx Convolvoli

Final cause of the resemblance of some flowers to insects, as the Bee-orchis

In some plants of the cla.s.s Tetradynamia, or Four Powers, the two shorter stamens, when at maturity, rise as high as the others

Ice in the caves on Teneriff, which were formerly hollowed by volcanic fires

Some parasites do not injure trees, as Tillandsia and Epidendrum

Mosses growing on trees injure them

Marriages of plants necessary to be celebrated in the air

Insects with legs on their backs

Scarcity of grain in wet seasons

Tartarian lamb; use of down on vegetables; air, gla.s.s, wax, and fat, are bad conductors of heat; snow does not moisten the living animals buried in it, ill.u.s.trated by burning camphor in snow

Of the collapse of the sensitive plant

Birds of pa.s.sage